Volvo's new baby seat in the front

Volvo cars have a new concept for their luxury, family-friendly vehicles - a swivel child seat built into a console that sits where the front passenger seat would normally be.

In Volvo's "Excellence Child Seat Concept," the front passenger seat is removed from the car. Parents are able to swivel the seat when seating the child and then lock the seat in a rear-facing position. A parent could sit in the back-seat of the car and be face-to-face with the baby.

“We started by asking ourselves if we could make life easier for parents and safer for their children when it comes to the child seat experience,” said Tisha Johnson, Chief Designer Interiors at Volvo Cars Concept and Monitoring Centre, in a press release.

“We focused on three key benefits — making it easier to get the child into and out of the child seat from an ergonomic and comfort perspective, providing the child with a safe rearward facing seating position that enables it to keep eye-contact with either the driver or the rear passenger, and of course including enough storage for those vital child accessories, such as nappy's, bottles, wipes, and so on.”

Is Volvo is doing a good thing? Surely car manufacturers should be looking at innovative ways to safely load and transport children in cars since car seats are so often installed improperly.

Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, the director of the Doernbecher Tom Sargent Safety Centre said “it's nice to see some disruptive thinking about car design, aimed at finding ways to keep children safe.”

If implemented, The concept faces serious regulatory hurdles. It will go against existing car seat laws in countries such as the U.S., where children staying in the front seat is considered illegal.

Alex Todd Brand Manager at Its4women commented "It could be very distracting for the driver, especially if no one else was in the vehicle."